Musician’s story highlights vulnerability of going without coverage

By Matt Keefer | Mercury

Wednesday

Mar 26, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 26, 2014 at 7:00 AM

They’re waiting for him, out there, the beating crowd. He takes the stage. He looks across to his violinist, tattooed with short, cropped hair; they’ve been together since 2008, spent nights talking about the future. Talking about marriage. But now is the show, and in the seventh year of their band, Brown Bird, now is why David Lamb and his musical and life partner MorganEve Swain left behind the 9-to-5.

And after a few songs, something is horribly wrong.

Lamb and Swain were on tour during the spring of 2013 for the release of Brown Bird’s sixth full-length album of gypsy dance-dirges, “Fits of Reason,” when Lamb began experiencing exhaustion and nausea.

“At the end of the first week of touring, I noticed that I was getting really run-down after the shows,” recalls Lamb, 36, an Illinois native. He went to a clinic, and they diagnosed him with a likely bout of the flu and prescribed Prednisone, antibiotics, and some rest. Which is all well and fine until they run out.

And then his fatigue and nausea came back worse. In May in Houston, Lamb and Swain knew something was wrong.

“About halfway through our set I looked at him — he was pale and sweating and exhausted — and I said, ‘Are you going to make it?’ And he sort of shrugged and said he wasn’t sure. That was it for me,” Swain, 28, wrote in an email.

Lamb went to the emergency room where a doctor immediately diagnosed him as being anemic — with dangerously low levels of hemoglobin. Lamb and Swain canceled the rest of the tour and, without a source of income, or insurance, they traveled back to Rhode Island where they soon discovered he had leukemia.

“Over the past five years we’d built a life together that was completely co-dependent,” Swain said. “We share a home, a band, a business, a way of life and a relationship. The fear of losing all of that was devastating.”

When they left their jobs in September 2011 to pursue touring (Lamb had worked on electrical systems for Blount Boats and Swain was a production manager at New Harvest Coffee Roasters), Swain had purchased insurance for herself. But Lamb was put off by the cost. Swain admits that at the time, “Not having that expense certainly helped us financially for a while.” Until the worst comes along.

According to an August 2013 survey by the Washington, D.C.-based Future of Music Coalition, a national musician advocacy organization, 43 percent of musicians do not have health insurance, more than twice the national average of 18 percent. Educating musicians and other artists about their options is the mission of HeadCount, a New York City-based nonprofit co-founded by Brown University graduate Andy Bernstein. HeadCount’s 24-hour hotline has a trained expert who can offer information about the steps needed to enroll for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the federal law that went into effect this year. The deadline to enroll without penalty is Monday, March 31. The hotline number is (919) 264-0418.

Bernstein, HeadCount’s executive director, heard about Lamb’s story through his staff, who loved Brown Bird’s music, and produced a YouTube video to tell Lamb’s story. “We had started working on a larger project to tell musicians’ stories as a way to educate the public about health insurance... so Dave’s story, as personal as it is, is also very universal. By telling [these stories] it sort of demystifies what health insurance is about.”

“[Lamb’s story tells] the importance of knowing your options. Being informed is just always better than not being informed,” Bernstein adds. “He hadn’t really explored his options. And I think he’s not alone.”

But Lamb’s story isn’t a tragic one: he and Swain set up a successful fundraiser on the crowd-funding website Youcaring.com and raised almost $68,000 to pay for medical bills from a successful bone marrow transplant last September at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Now Lamb has an appreciation for the necessity for health insurance, for which the couple pays $680 per month. He is working on a new album of songs but can’t tour or be in crowded places until September.

“There’s themes of rebirth, themes of transition,” Lamb says of the new album. “Mood-wise, I guess in retrospect, it’s probably going to be pretty intense. It’s a pretty heavy time for us and our families.”

So that’s the story, one that takes on greater significance with the approach of the March 31 federal deadline to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the federal law that went into effect this year. The law requires that most Americans have health insurance and sets a penalty for those who don’t sign up. Government assistance is provided for qualified individuals based on income to make coverage cheaper.

Oh, and one last thing: Lamb’s father married the two right before the transplant in their hometown of Warren. Aren’t happy endings nice?

Matt Keefer is a fan of happy endings. In real life, at least. He music blogs at www.mattkeefer.blogspot.com.

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